Name and Occupation

Dutch Mural Demolition

Name: Niels Duursma – Occupation: Graffiti Artist – Role: Project Organizer

Heerenveen Jam

A flat in Heerenveen was scheduled for demolition. The Heerenhage building—a standard Dutch residential block on the edge of a canal—had a date set with the wrecking ball. Before that happened, Niels Duursma had a different idea. He proposed a graffiti jam. The owners agreed. What followed covered the entire building.

Artists from across the Netherlands painted every available surface. The canal running alongside meant the work was visible from passing boats. The audience wasn’t just the neighbourhood—it was anyone moving through the waterway.

The building sat flat and wide. Writers had room to scale their work up significantly. Illustrative pieces ran alongside traditional graffiti lettering. 3D elements added depth across several sections. The mix of styles emerged from the open call format. Different artists brought different approaches and worked simultaneously on adjacent walls.

The Location

Heerenveen is not Amsterdam or Rotterdam. It doesn’t have an established street art circuit or neighbourhoods known for murals. The Heerenhage building sat in an area of the city that had largely been overlooked. The project didn’t drop into a pre-existing creative ecosystem. It created one temporarily—for the duration of the jam and the weeks the building stood after.

The Project

The owners began uncertain. By the end they were advocates. Local press covered it—the Heerenveense Courant ran two pieces, one with drone footage of the work in progress. From above, the building read as a single continuous work. At street level it was a collection of individual pieces. Both readings were correct.

Locals who had initially questioned the project changed position once the walls went up. The building that had been blank and unremarkable became the most photographed thing in the neighbourhood in days.

The project sat inside broader context. Cities across the Netherlands increasingly use condemned buildings as temporary canvases before demolition. The logic is straightforward—the wall is coming down anyway. What happens between now and then is open.

It costs the owners nothing. Gives artists a surface they couldn’t otherwise access legally. The city gets colour where there was grey. The artists get scale they can’t find anywhere else. The building gets a final chapter before it disappears.

The Philosophy

The work was always going to be demolished. That was part of the point. Street art that gets torn down isn’t failed street art—it’s street art that completed its purpose. The wall existed. The work went on it. People saw it. Then the building came down. That cycle is the work.

Niels approaches demolition projects differently from permanent commissions. The pressure to make something lasting is gone. What remains is the freedom to make something true to the moment—without worrying about weather, writers painting over it, or the owner changing their mind in five years.

That freedom produces different work. A different relationship between artist and surface. When permanence is off the table, the question shifts from what will last to what is right for this wall, right now.

The Heerenveen project answered that question across every surface of a six-storey building on a Dutch canal. The building is gone. The documentation remains. That’s the deal with temporary public art—the work ends, the record doesn’t.

Watch the feature story on Youtube